The present invention relates to adapter selection, and more specifically, to adapter selection based on a queue time factor.
In computing systems, input/output adapters (I/O adapters) are electronic circuits (e.g., expansion card, plug-in module) that accept inputs, perform some transformation (e.g., compression, sorting), and provide the transformed data as output. An adapter may be shared by multiple machines or by multiple logical partitions, referred to as virtual machines (self-contained operating environments that behave like individual computers). The use of adapters allows the central processing unit (CPU) core processor of the machine or VM to perform other tasks rather than those done by the adapters. In some environments, each machine or virtual machine (VM) is unaware of the amount of work that other machines or VMs may have sent to the same adapter for processing and output.